Old-Style SMS to Prosper

Despite growth in enhanced messaging services over the next five years, SMS will remain a key revenue driver for the messaging market globally.

That is the conclusion of Mobile Messaging – 2005, a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media which analyses the current position and future prospects for a range of enhanced messaging options.

Informa thinks person to person (P2P) messaging will continue to represent the main sector of the business. “But application to person (A2P) and interactive messaging will become increasingly important as new services such as mobile marketing and delivery of rich content come on stream.”

“We believe the messaging market has great potential” says Dan Winterbottom, one of the report’s authors. “With total revenues approaching $120 billion globally by 2010, this is one of the key growth sectors in mobile services.”

The growth will come from new markets such as the developing areas of Asia Pacific, but a large part will derive from an increasingly complex marketplace including business messaging such as mobile email services.

The report concludes that device usability, pricing and quality of service are the immediate concerns to be addressed, but in the medium term the outlook for other enhanced messaging including MMS and IM is “promising”.

Informa says that most mobile handsets in the US will incorporate IM software by the end of this year to link directly to users’ IM on their PC.

“Bundling new messaging services such as mobile email into mobile data plans will also greatly increase take-up of these services worldwide.”